


Literacy of the Heart

by Lockadee



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: A Forest Really, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Amnesia, Astral Plane Shenanigans, Canon Compliant Until S2, Canon Divergent After S2, Canon-Typical Violence, Low-Key Conspiracy Theories, M/M, Minor Character Death, OCs - Freeform, Pining, Post S2 AU, Pre-Canon, Pre-Kerberos Mission, Shiro Plays the Piano, Shiro Saves Kittens while Wet and Shirtless, Shiro is Buried in Kittens, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, so much pining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-05-23 17:07:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14938392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lockadee/pseuds/Lockadee
Summary: Shiro has never been able to read the name scrawled across his wrist. The letters just don’t exist in any earthly language—he’s checked. But they must exist somewhere, out there among the stars with the soulmate whose name he carries. Enlisting in the Garrison gives him the chance to search the galaxy for clues, but he finds that the price of knowledge is steep and he won’t always like the answer.Keith hasn’t always had a name. But life was almost easier before Takashi Shirogane appeared on his wrist in prim, black ink.(A “name on your wrist” soulmate AU in which Galra Keith has a Galra mom who gave him a Galra name. Unfortunately, no one knows that.)





	Literacy of the Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there! Thanks for reading! This fic is actually my Sheith Big Bang 2017 fic that got horribly, horribly delayed. As such, it only accounts for canon until S2, since this whole thing was plotted in February of 2017. I figured I might as well post it now so people who haven't caught up to S6 have something to read for the next few days until they have a chance to watch it.
> 
> This fic does have some lovely art by isnotaband-isanidea, which I'll hopefully link shortly. She didn't get a chance to set up a post ahead of time because even I didn't know I'd be posting this right now. It was a bit of an impulse decision.
> 
> A big thank you to Enzetto, Xyriath, and not_the_Alex_youre_looking_for for being willing to beta several sections of this monstrosity for me! Any remaining errors/oddities are because I was too impatient to finish editing properly.
> 
> I'd also like to give some extra special thanks to dimplelegacymila, who served as sounding board, alpha reader, cheerleader, and hand-holder. Without her, I would have given up on ever posting this thing by the time I missed the deadline by more than a month.
> 
> And last, but certainly not least, I'd like to thank you, the reader, for choosing to spend your time here with me and my fic. If you have any questions/comments/concern/typos you noticed, please let me know! I'm always glad to chat or receive concrit.

“Hey! Where’s your name?”

Keith, at five years old, has just started his first day of school, but someone is already talking to him. The classroom’s arranged in seven small islands made of four desks each, all smushed together into tiny, lopsided “tables”, so he couldn’t have avoided talking to the other kids forever, but he still thinks he should have had more time. The girl sitting one desk over might not actually be talking to him, but their other tablemates ran to the reading corner as soon as free time started while he and the girl stayed behind to color, so it’s pretty unlikely that she’s talking to one of them. But still. That doesn’t mean she’s talking to him. There are plenty of not-him people she could be talking to.

Keith’s hunched shoulders relax, just a little. She’s probably talking to someone else. He breathes in, long and slow and deep—just like his dad taught him—and eases the death-grip threatening to snap the stubby red crayon he has clenched in his fist. But just as he puts his crayon back to work coloring the flames of his rocket ship, the same voice pipes up again.

“Hello, I’m talking to you.”

So she is talking to him.

Keith chokes on his next breath and his shoulders hike back up around his ears. He turns to face his neighbor, skin prickling with unease. Corn-silk wisps of yellow hair fall into a face all pink and scrunched up like she’s been staring at the sun for too long and her lips are still stained sticky with snack time’s apple juice; graham cracker crumbs cling to the corners of her mouth and spill down the front of her floral-print dress. She tilts her head when she catches him staring.

“Well?” she asks. “Where’s your name?”

“Uh.” Keith pauses and glances at the name card sitting on his desk. He can’t really read yet, but he does know what his name looks like. “There?” he replies, pointing at the card, though he doesn’t know how she can’t see it by herself. It’s on the same blue cardstock as everyone else’s, and between the early morning light streaking in through the windows and the dim glow of the fluorescents overhead, the star stickers dotting the card’s edge gleam sunshine-gold.

“Not your name.” She rolls her eyes and heaves a put-upon sigh. “I already know that. Your name’s Keith. Ms. Dailey already said so during roll. Just like she said my name’s Addie,” the girl—Addie—huffs and glares at Keith, annoyed that he’s already forgotten her name. Joke’s on her though, Keith can’t forget what he never learned in the first place. He hadn’t been paying attention at all during roll; he’d been too busy pretending that he was somewhere else.

“I’m asking about your name,” she says again, like it will mean something new if she says it slower and louder.

And Keith doesn’t know what to do with that, so he doesn’t do anything at all.

“You know, your soulmate’s name,” Addie whines, as if Keith is trying to be confused and oblivious just to make her life harder.

But he’s not. He’s really not. He just doesn’t know what she’s talking about and it sounds like it’s something he’s supposed to know and she probably thinks he’s weird now and he wants to pull his legs up onto his chair and curl into a ball, but his dad said he couldn’t do that at school and he doesn’t know why he can’t do that or why he even has to go to school in the first place.

And school is stupid.

Keith’s knees have already started twitching, inching up to float above his chair like tiny UFOs, but Addie doesn’t seem to notice as she rambles on. “It’s supposed to be on the arm you use to color. That’s what my mom says anyway. Like mine! See?”

She shoves her arm in Keith’s face and he flinches away, his butt sliding along the slick seat of his plastic chair. But before he can wobble right off the edge, he slams his heels onto the floor. The rubber soles of his shoes screech along the scratched linoleum tiles like the rusting hinges on his front door. He wishes the sound were his front door. Then he would be home and he could curl up into whatever shape he wanted to on his big, comfy couch. And he could have a snack with his dad—none of this apple juice and graham cracker stuff, but a nice warm mug of cocoa. And maybe some cookies if he was extra good. It wouldn’t even matter that it’s summer and it’s too hot for cocoa.

Keith lips part, tasting the air, but instead warm chocolate and cinnamon, his nose and mouth flood with thick, smothering wax. His eyes blink open—he didn’t know he’d closed them—and immediately cross. Pink, pudgy fingers fist an acid green crayon much too close to his face and Keith sees what must be letters on Addie’s wrist, though they look like blurry inkblots so close up.

“Your name’s supposed to be on your coloring arm, but you’re coloring with that hand,” she says, waving towards Keith’s right hand, which is still wrapped tight around his crayon, “and I don’t see it. You’re s’pposed to have one. Everyone has one. Are you coloring with the wrong hand?”

He isn’t coloring with the wrong hand. He can’t be. He always colors the same things with the same hand and the same box of crayons. He looks at both of his arms again anyway, just in case, but they’re the same as always, covered in the scrapes and bruises of childhood mischief.

His dad had insisted that he wear “a nice long-sleeved shirt” for his first day of school and had nearly wrestled him into it when Keith had started throwing a fit because it’s August and it’s too hot for long sleeves. They’d compromised when Keith’s flailing whalloped his dad in the stomach and bashed his own elbow into the coffee table hard enough to draw tears: Keith would wear the nice, long-sleeved shirt, but he’d also get wear his awesome dino shorts. His dad doesn’t need to know that he’d rucked up his sleeves immediately after getting dropped off.

The coffee table bruise has turned the same gross yellow as dried snot; it stands out in stark relief against the delicate, indigo-blue tracery of his veins and the deeper navy of his bunched sleeves. His palms are littered with half-healed nicks and dirt smudges from scrabbling up his backyard tree, making one final bid for freedom after the long sleeves incident. His dad had found him in under ten minutes and made him go to school anyway; he wasn’t even late.

Keith’s arms look the same as they always have. No name in sight. Not even a letter.

“I don’t—I don’t have anything on any arm,” he tries to say, but his voice is high, and thin, and tight, and the words squeak out instead.

“But. But you’ve gotta. Everyone has a name. How else are you gonna figure out who’s gonna love you forever and ever?”

Keith swallows, but his throat still feels clogged. There's no way any air can get into his lungs. He can't breathe and he's going to turn purple and die. He saw it happen on TV once. A low hum rattles in his ears and that must be the choir of angels coming to take him away. It won't matter if no one loves him later because he's going to die now.

A hand grabs his wrist, and Keith spooks so hard he really would have fallen off of his chair this time if Addie weren't holding on so tight.

“Maybe yours is super small?" she ponders, turning Keith's wrist this way and that. "It could just be really hard to see." She pulls it right up to her eyes and her breath tickles the peach fuzz on his forearm. "Or—or maybe it’s written in the same color as your skin. My Uncle Tony’s looks almost skin-colored, so maybe yours is really, really skin-colored.” Upon finding nothing, she drops his arm and twists her face up tight, thinking hard with her fist pressed to her mouth.

“Oh! Or maybe your parents covered it up somehow." She beams, quick as a lightning strike, and Keith wants to back away, but at the same time he needs to know. "What if your soulmate’s someone super important, like a princess? And your parents covered it up to protect you from bad people! You should ask your mom. My mom says you should always ask if you have a question because clear communi-ca-tion is important.”

Keith wilts. “… I don’t have a mom,” he whispers. It seems like there’s a lot he doesn’t have.

Addie blinks slowly, once, then a second time, and then a third, knocked off-balance and left dumbstruck with her mouth bobbing open like a goldfish’s. Keith can see her eyes getting shiny. She’s going to cry. But she can’t. She can’t because if she cries, then Keith will cry and he promised his dad he wouldn’t cry on his first day of school. Addie screws her eyes shut and sniffles while Keith braces himself for the worst.

Smack.

Addie slaps her own cheeks with both palms. It’s quiet, but startles Keith nonetheless. When she opens her eyes again they’re still glimmering, but they look like diamonds, not tears.

“Do you have a dad?” she asks.

Keith meets her stare dead-on. He can’t look away. “Yeah,” he breathes, not even daring to blink as his own eyes start to water.

“Do you think he knows why your name’s a secret?”

Hope sparks in Keith’s chest. “Maybe.” Maybe there’s nothing wrong with him. A smile sneaks in at the corner of his mouth. “Yeah. My dad’s really smart. He’d know.” His dad would have told him if something were wrong. Maybe he is special. The only secrets his dad ever keeps are good secrets, like surprises. Keith feels little laughter bubbles shake his chest, filling him up like soda fizz fit to burst and it’s hard to keep them inside. They’re so warm.

“Well there you go then! You can ask him!”

Keith’s glee is infectious and Addie has none of his restraint. Bright peals of laughter tumble out of her mouth and even if it’s impolite in the middle of class, Keith can’t help himself. He bursts and giggles spill out everywhere. His face is turning red and tears are streaming down his cheeks and he can’t breathe, but Keith doesn’t think this counts as breaking his promise.

“… And if your soulmate is a princess,” says Keith’s very first friend, breathless and still hiccupping with delight, “your secret’d be safe with me. I wouldn’t tell anybody. Promise. And you wouldn’t even think to ask if it weren’t for me, so—so I think you should tell me if they are.”

“I’ll let you know if they’re a princess,” Keith swears, fervent as a five-year-old can be.

“Promise?”

“Promise!”

They hook their pinkies to seal the deal and go back to coloring.

Keith doesn’t hate school anymore, but he still wants to go home. He has a question to ask. It can wait a while though. For now he’s content to sit with his friend at the small island of desks squashed together in the corner of an old kindergarten classroom where the air still tastes like laughter. He’ll ask his dad later, when he goes home after the last bell rings.

Except when he goes home that day, instead of his dad’s slow smile, he is met with a cop’s grim stare and Keith breaks the promise he made back when school was the scariest thing that could happen to him.

He forgets about his question.

It’s drowned by the dark folds of a suit a few sizes too big for his skinny shoulders. It’s choked by a black tie cinched a little too tight around his throat. It’s buried with his father six feet under the cold, red earth.

 

\---

 

It’s hot in the desert.

Summer, spring, fall, it’s always hot. Except in winter, but Keith’s never liked winter anyway.

He does like the desert.

“So is your soulmate dead, or are you just defective?”

The quiet.

“Carter!”

The solitude.

“What? I’m just asking a question!”

The peace.

“You’re just being a jerk.”

Unfortunately, Keith hasn’t lived in the desert since his father died eight years ago. Now, he lives in the city with his latest foster family. And though it’s as hot as the desert once was, Keith can’t lose himself in a thousand city lights the way he could in a sky of endless stars. He still tries, splayed out on apartment 404’s concrete balcony with his head pillowed on his arms.

Albuquerque's urban air is hazy, breezeless, and stifling. The stone buildings bake all day in the sun and keep the heat well into the evening so it’s still nearly eighty degrees out, even though the sun set hours ago. And yet, Keith would rather stew in his own sweat than retreat indoors and be assaulted by the incessant buzz of box fans and needle-pointed questions, so he barricades himself with a solid wall of heat and air that sticks to his ribs like overcooked oatmeal. But he still can’t escape the noise. Though the weather keeps Carter and Marisa Lawrence inside, their voices carry through the balcony’s screen door.

“It would make sense is all,” says Carter. He’s lying on the couch, ostensibly staring at the slowly spinning ceiling fan, but his voice is too loud for casual conversation and his eyes keep flitting over to Keith. “It would explain the whole broody-emo thing anyway. I’d be bitter too if I were soulless and no one loved me.” Carter tosses one arm over the back of the couch and props up his cheek with his other fist, head tilted towards his sister. A smug grin smears across face. “Luckily, the universe doesn’t hate me. Did you see? Hannah was wearing a sundress today.”

He sighs, loud and overdramatic. “She’s so pretty…”

Marisa, both older and wiser, just rolls her eyes. “I know you’re excited about finding your soulmate, but that doesn’t mean you have to be a jerk to Keith.”

Personally, Keith wouldn’t care that Carter’s a jerk, if he were a quiet jerk. Unfortunately, Carter lacks the capacity for quiet; Keith can hear his hackles rising and the angry rush of blood splotching his cheeks adobe-red.

“Don’t patronize me, Marisa,” Carter sneers, shoving himself upright. “You’re not Mom, so stop trying to act like her. You’re already bossy enough.” He plants his knees wide, crosses his arms, and puffs his chest out. He’s ready for a fight. “It’s no wonder Keith doesn’t like you.”

The city has been caught in a heat wave for the last two weeks and the apartment’s air conditioner has been out for the last four days. Since then, Marisa has practically lived in the living room lounge chair, hiding from the oppressive heat in a fortress defended by box fans that have blown her hair into a stormy halo. At Carter’s comment, she slides her legs down from her delicate perch and levels him with a cool gaze.

“Keith likes me just fine,” she says, sauntering over to the couch. Each step is smooth and languid like a cat’s. A big cat’s. “You’re the one he’s avoiding. Don’t you ever think that he might like you more if you weren’t a little twerp?” Her eyes are bright and sparkling, but they’re stone-hard.

Carter remains sitting, still puffed up on his own pride like a cock. He doesn’t realize that he’s prey already trapped between a predator’s teeth. Marisa snaps out a wrist, latches onto her brother’s ear, and pulls.

“You don’t think at all, do you?” she hisses. “Or else you would think that maybe he doesn’t have a ‘whole broody-emo thing’. Maybe he’s just sad. There are a lot of reasons why people can be sad, like not having any parents.” She means to be quiet, Keith has learned as much by now, but she can’t fight what’s in her blood. Marisa is a Lawrence, just like her brother. As much as she tries to soften her voice, her feelings are loud. Keith can hear her as well as if he were in the same room.

“Let go of me, you gorilla!” Carter squawks. He tries to pry Marisa’s fingers off his ear, but his clammy hands can’t crack her iron grip. She lets go on the next yank; Carter trips over his own feet and collapses back onto the couch in a tangled sprawl.

Chest heaving, he glares at his sister, who looms over him with her hands braced on her hips. “You’re just taking his side because you think he’s dreamy.”

“You give platonic soulmates a bad name,” he spits out, “chasing after a guy who doesn’t have a name, just because he can’t pick his soulmate over you. It’s a wonder Avery puts up with you.”

Ruddy blotches color Marisa’s cheeks. “Carter Ashton Lawrence, if you don’t shut up right now, I’m going to tell Hannah all about how you wet the bed last year and tried to blame it on the dog!”

Carter, though not always a smart kid, can spot the difference between a threat and a promise. His face turns chicken-feather white and he takes a moment to think, before grabbing one of the couch’s throw pillows and chucking it at his sister. It smashes into her face and he dashes for the safety of his room while she’s too stunned to hunt him down.

Getting beamed by a pillow slows her reaction time, but Marisa returns fire, hurling the offending cushion at Carter’s back as he runs. It rebounds off his slamming door and drops to the soft, carpeted floor. She sighs, starts towards Keith’s balcony haven and stops, glancing back at Carter’s door. She bites her lower lip, looks back at Keith, and starts towards Carter instead. Keith expected as much. As much as she may find him “dreamy”, family comes first.

He jumps when a single bare toe nudges his ankle.

“Do you mind if I sit?” asks Marisa as she peers down at him, the couch’s throw pillow clutched close to her chest. Her hair is conspicuously neater.

Keith shrugs. “It’s your house.”

Marisa bites her lip again, but settles down beside him on the ground, poking her legs through the slats in the balcony railing and resting her chin on her pilfered pillow. There’s nothing worth looking at the way she’s turned. The lot next door has been under construction since before Lawrences took Keith in. If it ever finishes, apartment 404 will have great views of a brand new parking lot. Keith probably won’t be around to see it.

The night seems even hotter now that there’s a second body on the balcony and even though Marisa doesn’t make a sound, it feels noisier than it did when Keith was alone. Marisa doesn’t have the patience to let the quiet last, though.

“I’m sorry about him,” she says. “I wish I could say he’s not always such a brat, but he kind of is.”

“Whatever.” Keith’s used to it. He’s dealt with worse.

“I guess you must be pretty used to people asking about it. It probably gets tiring, huh?” Marisa freezes as the question slips out, back straight and fingers digging into her cushion. “Shoot. That probably counts as asking about it myself.” She buries her face in the pillow. “Oh man, Carter’s right isn’t he? You probably do hate me.”

“I don’t hate you.”

“Really?” She perks up and leans in too close. Keith winces. Marisa blushes, catching on, and scoots herself back to a respectable distance. “I mean. That’s good. I hate it when Carter’s right.”

“Me too.” Keith hauls himself upright; he knows that look in her eyes. She wants to talk and he knows this conversation. He can’t avoid it. He can’t ever seem to avoid it. “You can ask,” he says. “You look like you want to.”

“Are you sure?”

He’s sure that if this doesn’t happen now, he’ll feel the weight of her questions dragging at his shoulders until he leaves for his next placement. He’s already dealing with Carter’s ire and he doesn’t even know what his did to set the kid off in the first place. He can’t afford to alienate Marisa when he knows how to keep her on his side.

What he says is, “I wouldn’t have said you could otherwise.”

Marisa still seems unsure and pulls her legs up, squishing herself into the corner across from Keith. Her fingers can’t decide what to do. They fidget with the fraying edges of her denim shorts one moment and tangle in the strands of her long dark hair the next. With her bangs shielding her eyes, Keith can’t tell if she’s looking at him when she asks, “People hassle you for not having a mark, don’t they?”

“It’s come up.”

She rubs her thumb back and forth across the inside of her left wrist, where her own name is a deep blue bruise. “Have you ever thought about faking one? Picking a name you like and sharpie-ing it on? It would get everyone off your back.” Back and forth, back and forth—Marisa doesn’t seem to notice the rubbing, but her wrist is turning a raw red.

Keith has thought about faking a mark before. After his fourth, ninth, and thirteenth placements. His foster parents hadn’t known how to deal with something as strange as a nameless kid.

“You mean it would make me seem normal,” he says.

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being not normal!” Marisa hurries to reassure him. “It means you’re unique!”

She lifts her head and catches his eyes, trying to make him believe her. She’s the earnest sort though, he never doubted that she meant it. But now that she’s meeting his eyes, he can see something lurking there. Something familiar. “…But people are going to notice you more and they don’t tend to like people who are different,” she murmurs.

“No, they don’t.” Keith takes a chance and adds, “You sound like you’re speaking from experience.”

Marisa chuckles. It’s not a happy sound. It’s the rasp of an old metal drawer that’s been pulled out again, and again, and again, until the smoothing layer of paint has peeled away so that each successive pull scrapes steel against steel. “Platonic soulmates aren’t the most common,” she says, looking back inside at the locked wooden door and the brother she left behind. “Carter and I were closer, before. Now…”

“He’s a little twerp?” Keith smirks. It won’t lighten the mood the way a smile or a laugh would, but smiles sit awkwardly on his face and his laughter sounds like the grumble of an ill-maintained engine. The smirk seems to work well enough though, Marisa giggles, quiet but genuine.

“Pretty much.”

She sighs, “Things got worse after he found Hannah—which is extra stupid because it’s not even like platonic soulmate pairs are that uncommon.”

They weren’t. Not like being nameless.

“We just aren’t the majority,” she continues, waving a hand to encompass the city and the wider world beyond. But then she slumps a little, adding, “Sometimes people are just looking for an excuse to be mean.”

Keith lets the silence grow. Its weight bows Marisa’s head and she folds into herself.

“I’ve never had a name,” says Keith, looking down at the blank expanse of his wrist. “I don’t know if it’s because I never got one, or if they died and their name scarred-out so long ago that I can’t see what it was.” He lifts his head and finds Marisa staring back.

“I thought about faking it once.” He’d gotten as far as putting a trembling pen to his wrist, but he couldn’t figure out what to write for the first letter. “You don’t think about what it means to have the name on the wrist of your dominant hand until you try writing with the other one and the letters shake.”

“You couldn’t get someone else to write it for you?”

“No.”

“I would. Write a name for you, that is. If-if you wanted,” Marisa stammers.

Keith keeps his gaze as steady as his voice. “No.” Marisa looks downright offended now, and that’s the opposite of what Keith wanted when he started this so he continues. “It’s good that I never actually faked one. If I did have a name once, forging a new one would be dishonoring the dead.”

Marisa huffs, but seems mollified enough. Keith counts it as a win.

“And if you’ve never had a name?”

“Then there’s no point in pretending to be something I’m not. Like you said, sometimes people are just looking for an excuse.”

“But you don’t have to give them one.”

“Neither do you.”

Marisa bites her lip again. She does that a lot. Keith wonders if he has any obvious nervous ticks too.

“Ugh,” she groans, standing up and running a hand through her hair to pull it out of her face. The other hand keeps the couch pillow tucked between her elbow crook and her cocked hip. “I guess I don’t, but I can’t change who I am. They can cling to their cruddy excuses. They’d just find another one if I tried.” She clicks her tongue. “Still sucks, though.”

“Yep.”

Marisa pouts and kicks his ankle companionably. “You know, I came out here to cheer you up,” she grumbles.

“Sorry?” Keith offers, head tilted and eyebrows raised.

She throws the pillow at him.

It hits him in the face.

Four months later, Keith leaves the Lawrences. He heads out in the morning, when the weather is still cool and the clatter of construction next door muffles the groan of the apartment’s front door. He would feel like a thief sneaking out after a heist, but Carter and Marisa are watching him from the balcony. Carter’s hair looks like a bird’s nest while Marisa’s is just barely kempt in a long, dark plait. They’re both bundled in blankets and PJs and staring with matching hazel eyes that seem to see right through him. Keith self-consciously fidgets with the cuffs of his long, black sleeves, and notices a dark streak on his right wrist. He pauses, glancing at the Lawrence siblings and the social worker a few paces in front him before he surreptitiously adjusts his sleeve again. Those are letters on his wrist. They weren’t there when he got dressed this morning, which means they can’t be the product of a cruel prank. They have to be genuine. Genuine letters for a genuine soul mark.

His fingers itch to rip at his sleeve so he can see, but he’s still mindful of his audience. The tingling in his bones and the heat pulsating from his wrist all urge him to read and know now, but this is something special, private, and Keith will not share it with anyone.

It’s not that he dislikes the Lawrences. They aren’t bad people, but they aren’t family; they aren’t friends. Keith won’t keep in touch after he’s gone. He hasn’t with any of his past placements and doesn’t plan on it for any future placements either.

But then again… nothing will be the same after today.

A warm smile breaks over Keith’s face like sunrise and he lifts his right hand to wave goodbye. He’s too far away to see their expressions, but Marisa is waving back hard enough to make her braid swing like a pendulum and even Carter waves a sleepy farewell.

It’s only once he’s settled in the social worker’s car, with apartment 404 shrinking in the rearview mirror and the racket of bulldozers and jackhammers fading to a dull roar, that Keith peels back his sleeve to look at the name. His name. He silently tests the weight of it in his mouth, feels the ghost of its consonants cut against his teeth and its vowels rumble in his throat and slide off his tongue. He traces each crisp black letter, over and over and over again, until his left hand knows Takashi Shirogane’s name better than his own.

 

\---

 

Keith strides through the gates of Galaxy Garrison with a single duffle bag slung over his shoulders. He’s only brought the necessities: five sets of clothes, some toiletries, a razor, a comb, and one extra pair of socks—fuzzy, woolen monstrosities that are too thick to wear in the arid desert climate, but are perfect for hiding a knife. Technically, he shouldn’t have been carrying his knife for the past nine years, but he’s kept it with him despite the risks of being caught. When he left home, it was one of the few keepsakes that were small enough to take with him. And it’s his mother’s only memento. All together, Keith’s things don’t even fill his bag, and its empty corners flap against his side with each quick step through the hall.

Galaxy Garrison itself is a monolith of modernism, all gleaming glass and sharp metal jutting out from familiar red dunes. It’s humans conquering one of Earth’s harshest environments as they prepare to conquer space. But despite humanity’s best efforts, the desert is not so easily tamed. Coarse sand has scrubbed every sharp corner smooth, dulled each edge, and battered the walls so that they are muted and matte like old bones. Galaxy Garrison is discipline, but the desert is defiance; Keith is glad to be home.

He settles into life at the Garrison quickly, but finds that the Garrison is at once both too large and too small. The corridors are all wide and well lit, but they’re always crowded. Students linger in the hallways during the day and officers patrol during the night to catch anyone who isn’t cowed by the law of curfew. There is a constant hum in the air: from the fluorescent lights overhead, from his chattering classmates, even from the inside of his own head. But even though Keith is constantly surrounded by people, he slips through the swarms as a solitary shadow.

And yet, like many a small town, the Garrison is rife with rumors from which even the most isolated cannot escape.

Keith had enlisted for a single reason—he wants to fly. And now he does. He flies like other people breathe, instinctively and thoughtlessly, but steady. Despite held breaths, steady. Despite stuttering gasps, steady. Despite each inconstant lungful, he keeps breathing, keeps living, keeps flying—steady, steady, steady. He flies and each exhale propels him faster, through pinpoint turns and debris-strewn asteroid fields, never stopping, never slowing, only ever flying faster. He flies like he was born to the stars.

It doesn’t take long for the comparisons to come. Before his first month is over, even Keith hears the whispers of how he’s going to knock the Garrison’s golden boy from his pedestal. Keith wouldn’t pay the gossip any mind, if Golden Boy’s name weren’t Takashi Shirogane.

Takashi Shirogane is… not what Keith had expected. Not that Keith had had an idea of what to expect, but he lacks the scope of imagination to dream up the man he first sees in one of the Garrison’s many generic hallways. Takashi is messier than his reputation would suggest. His shoulders are loose and easy as he laughs, lounging against a wall, wearing a uniform that’s just this side of rumpled, and surrounded by cadets who laugh with him. His hair cut isn't regulation and his bangs are starting to get shaggy. He has wide shoulders, but a racer’s sleek strength, and his muscles look like the product of functional combat training rather than long hours working out at the gym. He laughs with his mouth hanging open, his head thrown back, and his dark eyes crinkled shut.

And when Keith looks at him, he sees everything that’s beautiful.

Keith has spent fourteen years without a soulmate, has spent another long year waking up every morning and checking the name on his wrist to see that it’s still there, just in case the day before was a dream. But now that he’s face-to-face with Takashi himself, only a few feet of empty space between them, Keith doesn’t know what to do. And yet, there’s really only one thing he can do. He looks at his soulmate and it’s like there’s nothing else in the universe. There’s nothing else for gravity to pull on, nothing there to anchor him, and so he gets drawn in and dragged ever closer to collision.

He’s across the hallway before he’s thought about it, crashing into Takashi’s orbit, crashing into Takashi’s sphere of friends, crashing into a new life for them both. And when there’s only a single foot of space left between them and Keith can only see the swathe of orange fabric covering Takashi’s collarbones, Takashi is still devastating.

Steeling his nerves, Keith looks up into dark, curious eyes, and asks, “Takashi Shirogane?”

“Yes, that’s me. Can I help you?” Takashi’s voice reminds Keith of driving down deserted highways with his window rolled all the way down and the rumble of wind rushing in his ears.

“I’m Keith. Keith Kogane.” He holds his breath; he has no choice in the matter. His body refuses to take in any more air.

Takashi smiles at him, but it’s bland. He doesn’t hug Keith or shout or even laugh like he was doing before. He just. Smiles. He smiles, and it has all the substance of a blank sheet of paper. “It’s nice to meet you, Keith,” he says in a tone that’s as bland as his face.

“I’m Keith,” he tries again, “Keith Kogane.”

And this time, Takashi’s eyes light up. Keith suddenly finds that he can breathe again.

“…Oh! You’re the new pilot everyone’s been talking about. They say you’re going to break my sim records before the semester’s over.”

Oh.

Oh. Of course.

"Uh, I guess. I mean, maybe? I—"

I what? Hi, I'm Keith; I'm your soulmate? But that isn’t quite true, is it? It can’t be. Soulmates are supposed to be easy—effortless, unconditional love. And this is anything but; it’s drowning on dry land, smothered by a stranger’s indifference. Because that’s what Shirogane is, really. A stranger. Not someone he knows. Not someone who knows him. And neither of them have any real cause to care about the other; a name on Keith’s wrist doesn’t change that.

But Keith still does. He cares. He cares a lot.

Tremors he’s been ignoring since that first flat pleasantry shook the foundation he’s been standing on for the last year now threaten to knock Keith off his feet. The Earth is crumbling beneath him. Or maybe his knees are just giving out; he locks them just in case. He’s already humiliated himself enough without falling flat on his face. He’d been so sure, so excited, that he hadn’t once thought that this Takashi Shirogane might not be his Takashi Shirogane. Because of course he’s not Keith’s. Keith’s life doesn’t work that way.

Shirogane stares at him patiently while Keith stumbles over his own tongue and a furious, embarrassed heat crawls up his neck. Even now that he knows, Shirogane's just so, so. Keith doesn't know what Shirogane is, but it doesn’t matter. Whatever else he is, he's not Keith's, no matter how right he feels.

Keith has flown and crashed a hundred different sims in a hundred different ways, but this is the first time he’s ever felt the heart-clenching fear of falling. The ground is coming up fast.

"I—uh. I just. Wanted to introduce myself. It’s rude to break all your records without introducing myself," he chokes out. He tries to spit the words out, spit out the lie that’s rotting his tongue and the gritty sand that’s clogging his lungs, but he can’t. He knows now, but hope is a half-crushed cockroach that just won’t die. It sits, festering in the shadow of a shoe still waiting to drop, fed by a thousand what ifs and a hundred more maybes. Buried deep behind his mortification, it’s the part of Keith, small and desperate and so tired of being alone, that will wait forever for someone to belong with.

But Shirogane’s bland smile is eternal.

"I have a class starting soon, but it was nice to meet you. Maybe I'll see you around campus some time?" says Shirogane, checking his phone and already turning down the hallway.

"Yeah," Keith whispers and watches helplessly as Takashi Shirogane walks away.

 

\---

 

No one is allowed to be on the Garrison’s rooftops, but that's not the kind of thing that has ever stopped Keith. It chafes, spending so much time trapped inside running flight sim after flight sim because he has nothing better to do than try to take down as many of Takashi Shirogane’s records as possible. It makes him antsy. Makes his toes start tapping and his fingers start twitching until he wants to claw at his arms so that something will stop.

Instead, from time to time, he escapes.

The roof is a new discovery, but the glittering black sea above him is more familiar than his own hands. Slumping against the cold concrete wall and sucking in greedy lungfuls of fresh air, Keith takes a moment to savor the stars and the quiet. He feels his tension melt away in misty breaths; they’re the only clouds in the clear night sky. Then, shoving himself away from the wall, he scouts the rooftop for a more secure hideaway.

He’s just checking out a space behind some solar panels when a shout rings out near the commissary’s back entrance. It’s too close for comfort, so Keith ducks into a shadow and slides back towards the rooftop door. He had wanted to find a new sanctuary, but he may need to look into getting one with more escape routes. A second shout has him shuffling faster, but it’s still the same voice. Only the one person.

Keith pauses.

One… familiar person. Who is also breaking curfew.

“Bacon!”

And possibly raiding the commissary for snacks.

Keith knows he shouldn’t, knows he should go back inside, go back to his dorm, and go to bed. He can sneak out again tomorrow if he needs to. But he can’t help himself, pulled like a moth to the flames.

He’s been avoiding Shirogane for weeks. Ever since that disastrous first meeting, Keith has hurled himself into empty classrooms and well-placed storage closets whenever he sees Shirogane coming down the hall. He’s gotten good at dodging falling mops. But here and now, he has a chance to look without being looked at in turn and it’s too good a chance to pass up, even if crawling out to the ledge makes him more visible from the ground and much more likely to get caught trespassing. Even if he knows this can’t end well for him.

Keith creeps over to the unprotected edge and grabs hold of the roof’s corner. His new fingerless gloves creak with the added stress, leather still stiff and in desperate need of breaking in.

As always, Shirogane is a surprise. Keith didn't even know the Garrison had cats.

“Bacon, no!” Shirogane calls, glaring at a tiny, orange and white mottled kitten that is much more interested in exploring than listening to a stuffy grownup. Bacon the cat scampers away as fast as his fluffy butt will scoot, wobble-prowling his way towards freedom with his tail sticking straight up, unable to balance his stumbling steps. And Shirogane can do nothing to halt the renegade Bacon’s forward march, pinned as is under immovable weight of what must be Bacon’s four fragile siblings.

Keith counts six cats in total, four mini fuzz balls crawling all over Shirogane, Bacon, and one adult cat napping in Shirogane’s lap. An intrepid gray kitten scales broad shoulders, while an adventurous black cat tries to wriggle its way on top of Shirogane’s head. Its paws are too tiny to haul itself up though, so it just keeps batting at him and mussing his hair. Judging from its current likeness bird’s nest, the kitten must have been at it for a while. The final two kittens snap at each other over the top of the adult cat’s head.

"Charlene, stop biting Duke,” Shirogane scolds, wiggling his fingers to distract the white cat that’s nipping at her brother. “You’re going to wake up your mom." Charlene takes the bait and lunges for Shirogane's fingertips instead.

"There we go," he coos, smoothing her ruffled fur with his off hand as she takes a swipe at her new nemeses. He yanks his fingers back just in time to avoid her claws. “That’s a good girl.”

But while Shirogane’s busy with Charlene, the small gray kitten wanders off his shoulder and decides to test its balance by marching down the plank of his bicep. Though his arm’s up high to keep his fingers just out of Charlene’s reach, the angle is still too steep for the gray kitten’s unsteady steps and it slides down his sleeve. Shirogane twists to catch it the crook of his elbow.

"Hello to you too,” he says, nudging the captured kitten’s nose with his own. “How's the view?"

The kitten mews at him in a small, squeaky voice, and promptly tumbles out of Shirogane’s elbow, falling right on top of the sleeping mom cat.

Shirogane sighs. "Well now look at what you've done. Mom needs a nap sometimes too." The kitten, showing absolutely no remorse, tackles its nearby siblings. Shirogane sighs again and scritches behind the mother cat's ears with his now free arm. "Good morning, Kuro."

Kuro yawns and stretches, shakes out her head, and licks a long, elegant paw.

The tiny gray kitten, now champion of the lap after shoving its siblings off Shirogane’s thighs, trots away from its kingdom to go bother Bacon.

"Smokey,” Shirogane whines, watching the second runaway with despair. “Not you too!"

Unflustered, Kuro arcs her back and pulls herself out of Shirogane's lap. She snaps up her wayward child between her teeth and deposits Smokey onto Shirogane before collecting Bacon and doing the same. Charlene, Duke, and Smokey all pounce on their new playmate, scrambling together into a tangled pile of fluff.

And... Shirogane laughs. Keith doesn’t like to admit it, but he’s missed that laugh, even though he’s only heard it once before.

The kittens, though feeling playful only moments ago, tire quickly and cuddle together to nap. The one that had been trying to climb Shirogane’s head, however, has fallen asleep nestled between the stiff collar of Shirogane’s uniform coat and the soft, dark t-shirt he's wearing underneath, its tiny nose buried against his warm neck.

"Guess it’s time for the kids to be put to bed," murmurs Shirogane as he lifts the kitten from his shoulder with oh so gentle fingers and brings it close to his face. "Good night, Adrien," he whispers and brushes the kitten's ear with his nose. Adrien twitches in his sleep and Shirogane bites back a chuckle.

He sets Adrien down with his siblings and waits as their mother takes them home one by one, until Shirogane is left kittenless in the cold. Even as Kuro herself melts away into the midnight shadows, Shirogane remains motionless with a silly, blissed-out smile plastered across his face.

Silence slowly covers the night like a blanket tucking in the last of the ambient noise.

"Achoo!"

Except for Shirogane’s foghorn sneeze.

“Ha—Achoo! Achoo! Ha—Ha—” He manages to catch the last sneeze, but he's definitely getting a case of the sniffles. Keith creeps closer. Are Shirogane’s eyes tearing up? Is he—he couldn’t possibly be allergic to cats? Keith wouldn't believe it, if Shirogane weren’t sitting right below him with red, watery eyes, and sounding like steamroller let loose in a bubble wrap factory. Shirogane’s still sneezing into his elbow and wiping tears from his eyes when he stumbles back inside. The dork.

But with Shirogane finally gone, the night is quiet again. Keith can settle down to watch the stars the way he’d planned but… His chest feels warm now, and there's an unfamiliar smile sticking to his face, and all of a sudden, inside sounds cozy rather than claustrophobic.

 

\---

 

Keith is breaking curfew for the fourth night this week. It’s Thursday.

He's managed to break a quarter of Shirogane's simulation records, but the rest are proving difficult to crack and Keith... may have plateaued. It’s been weeks since he last had a run he could be proud of and his flight scores aren’t anywhere near where they should be—where they need to be. They’re still good, better than most of his classmates’, but they’re not spectacular. Not once in a generation good.

The flight instructors used to compliment him, in the odd, often shouty way they do things. Now they’re quiet. Once upon a time, Keith would have thought that was a good thing.

He’s always been so sure of his flying; it’s the one thing in his life that makes sense, that’s always made sense. But he’s starting to feel like a kid who wished on a star and learned too late that it was just a satellite. He might not actually have what it takes to be the best.

He still has to try.

He doesn’t necessarily want to break the rules, but he needs more practice and he doesn't have time to squeeze it in before they hit the lights, so he’s memorized the officers' patrol schedule and makes do with illicit, midnight sim sessions. Not the most exciting use of his developing stealth skills, but at least he can get from his dorm in L-5 South to the sims in five minutes flat, undetected. And he hasn’t run into any major problems yet, which he thinks he can count as another win.

But tonight, the room he sneaks into is already illuminated with a sim mission already in progress. That’s… new.

No one else is desperate or stupid enough to risk disciplinary action for the sake of more sim time. Most cadets hate the sims with the fiery passion of a thousand burning suns, which they will never fly to if their scores are any indication. Keith quells the irritating thought that he himself may be flying too close to the sun.

The current sim pilot is coasting through what might be mistaken for Saturn’s rings, if they were made entirely of trash. Keith knows this mission; it's one of the scenarios where he’s yet to snag the high score—a sweeper sim, KS-1275.

The Garrison developed the sweepers after one too many exploration drones was lost as a casualty of space debris floating through low Earth orbit. Though scanners can track objects as small as half a centimeter in diameter and help ships maneuver around larger pieces of junk while shielding usually blocks anything smaller, the drone took an unlucky hit. A paint chip, just one millimeter long, hit a defect in the drone’s shielding and punched a fist-sized hole in its side, tearing through its delicate circuitry. Since then, the Garrison has taken the issue of orbital debris very seriously and the sweeper sim series was integrated as part of the core sim curriculum. Every potential pilot must pass KS-1275 or fail the entire track.

Despite the scenario being programmed because of the lost drone, the mission objective isn’t drone rescue or retrieval. Instead, the pilot is tasked with orbital debris removal. It is, at its heart, a glorified garbage simulator, training the “next generation of elite astro-explorers” to be the best space janitors they can be. Everyone hates it—no one joins the Garrison with dreams of picking up trash. It doesn’t even test a cadet’s piloting skills. Just their ability to point and shoot, point and shoot, point and shoot, point—not fall asleep—and shoot for a full thirty minutes. And if the cadet loses focus or veers too close to the rubble, a paint chip flying at five miles per second may take them out, same as the original drone. Not that that’s happened to Keith before.

Twenty-six minutes have elapsed on the current mission clock. For twenty-six minutes, the pilot has been sniping a smattering of space trash just so and they’re good at it. Flickering green beams of light indicate that they’ve opted for laser-broom removal, which while safe, is also mind-numbingly slow and dull. Shooting small objects like loose screws and frozen coolant with pulsing laser blasts is a demanding task, and the cadet’s a good shot, clean and precise, especially if they’ve been at it the entire time.

Keith’s never had the patience for that. He’s likely the only cadet who doesn’t prefer the laser-broom as safe and slow can usually score a passing, if mediocre grade. Using nets to nab larger objects instead is much faster and lets him practice maneuvering through danger-filled debris fields. Plus, he can take down larger, high-threat objects that the lasers can’t touch. But while he dispatches plenty of threats, he’s never quite able to avoid getting clipped and docked points for adding his own paint chips to the junk heap.

The current pilot is on track the beat Shirogane’s high score, but it’ll be close.

As the timer ticks up to twenty-nine minutes, Keith glances at the door. He’s not supposed to be here, but neither is the other cadet, so it’s not like they can rat Keith out. He fidgets with his gloves and crosses his arms. Maybe… Maybe he can get some tips for a clean run through KS-1275, even if he has to use the lasers to do it. He’s been trying to score above middling for weeks, but every single time he loses focus halfway through.

The greeting dies on Keith’s lips as the pilot exits through the now complete simulation. Of course. This is his life. He shouldn’t have expected any different.

“Oh! Uh. Hi, Keith. I didn’t expect to see you here,” says Shirogane, looking exactly like a kid caught with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar.

Keith raises an eyebrow. “I didn’t expect to see you either.” He stamps down on the small, giddy part of himself that fixates on the fact that Shirogane remembers his name. It’s probably part of the Golden Boy image. Somehow.

Shirogane stretches in a move clearly calculated to look at the door Keith’s blocking while still seeming casual, but there’s no way to skirt around Keith without looking awkward, no graceful exit available. He coughs, asking, “Did you want to use the simulator?”

“Yeah.” Keith didn’t sneak all the way to the simulation room to not use the simulator. “Same as you,” he shoots back, hands clenching in the crooks of his elbows. And while it’s not any of his business, he can’t help but ask, “Why KS-1275? It’s a fourth class sim. None of the fighter courses use it for anything.”

“Just because fighter class pilots don’t usually practice it,” Shirogane explains, straightening his spine and trying to mask his social stiffness with rigid military formality, “doesn’t mean I should slack off.”

Keith raises and eyebrow. “So you snuck out, after curfew, to practice a sim you don’t need and that doesn’t need real piloting because you want to keep your skills sharp?”

Shirogane deflates and rubs a hand over the back of his neck. “It sounds silly when you put it like that.”

“It sounded silly when you said it, too,” says Keith not quite able to keep the snicker out of his voice or the smirk off his face.

“I really do need the extra practice,” Shirogane sighs, leaning against the nearest wall.

Half of Keith is relieved: he isn’t the only one desperate for more sim time. But the other half of him is baffled. “What for? People already talk about you like you’re a legend. You’re the best pilot the Garrison’s ever had.”

Shirogane shoots him a small, wry smile. “I was the best pilot in the Garrison. There’s a new cadet fourth class that’s been making me look bad.”

Keith stares at him. He hasn’t noticed any exceptional pilots among the lower years. Maybe he should spend more time observing his classmates instead of cramming in as much flight practice as he can. But he’s sure he’d have noticed someone who’s capable threatening his scores.

Shirogane meets his gaze steadily.“You, Keith.”

“Oh.” Somehow, the answer is as expected as it is unexpected.

Shirogane’s smile cracks into a grin. “It is reassuring to know that I’m not the only one sneaking in extra practice time,” he chuckles.

Oh.

“Well, you aren’t the only one who needs it,” says Keith, definitely not pouting.

Shirogane pushes off the wall and walks over to him. He’s close enough that Keith can feel his gravity, his heat drawing Keith in even closer. “You’re having trouble with the sweepers, right?” Shirogane asks, voice low and quiet.

“…Yeah,” Keith replies, half-dazed. Maybe four late nights in a row wasn’t such a good idea; he can’t quite focus on Shirogane’s words, just the sound of them, rich and velvety like chocolate. It takes him a moment to regain control of his tongue. “How’d you know?”

“They’re some of my only safe records.The rest have either been broken, or nearly broken.” Grimacing, Shirogane admits, “I have friends who like to keep me updated on my fall from grace in excruciating detail.”

Whatever Shirogane sees on Keith’s face makes him pause and mull over his next words. “I shouldn’t tell you this if I want to keep my high scores intact, but there’s a secret to the sweeper sims.”

He takes a breath and says, slowly, giving each word a careful weight and enunciation, “Patience. Patience yields focus.”

Laughing, he adds, “Don’t give me that look. I’ve seen some of your runs.” Keith face heats and he does his best to smooth out whatever weird expression he’s making. He’s not sure whether to be proud or mortified that Shirogane has seen him fly.

Shirogane continues on, oblivious to Keith internal conflict. “You tend to rush in and take the most direct route for solving the problem, trying to get the job done as fast as possible. But sweepers are all timed. You’ll be there until the clock runs out no matter how much debris you remove or how quickly you do it. The direct method is quick and efficient for getting rid of larger objects, but you take too much collateral damage, and that doesn’t help in the long run. You need to keep focused and work towards the larger goal, not just the immediate mission.” He winks. “The professors give you bonus points for that.”

“Patience yields focus, huh?” Keith tests the phrase out and finds it oddly comforting. It’s not the first time someone has told him to slow down, curb his more impulsive tendencies, but it means more coming from someone who can match him in skill. He flexes his fingers and feels his gloves move with him rather than putting up a fight. Patience. He can do patience.

He’s about to thank Shirogane for his advice, maybe even throw in a friendly quip, but before he can, his brain registers Shirogane’s bloodshot eyes and subtle case of the sniffles, so what comes out instead is, “Have you been playing with the cats again?”

Shirogane freezes. “What? No! I—I—”

“Really?” With no consultation from his impulse control, Keith’s hand reaches out towards Shirogane’s forehead. “You don’t look so good. If it’s not allergies, you might be getting sick.”

“No, I’m fine!” says Shirogane, taking a stuttering step back. “Sorry, you’re right. They’re allergies.” His face is flaming and Keith can just make out a muttered, “I didn’t think anyone else knew about the cats.”

He’s probably not supposed to reply, but Keith does a lot of things he’s not supposed to do and most of them seem to involve Shirogane in one way or another, so he confesses, “I’ve seen you with them before. They’re cute.”

Shirogane, though still red-faced, looks delighted by the admission, almost sparkling and he leans back into Keith’s space. There’s a breathless tinge to his voice when he asks, “Would you like to meet them?”

“Now?” Keith replies, startled.

It’s not that Keith would say no if Shirogane wanted to go pet the cats right now, but he did want to get some practice in and Shirogane’s looking a little rough around the edges as is. And the cats are probably asleep already.

The smile brightening Shirogane’s face is somehow even more brilliant than usual; Keith fights the urge to squint. “I was thinking tomorrow, actually. You’ve got training to do now.” Shirogane claps a hand on Keith’s shoulder and Keith jolts at the contact. It’s… weird. New. But not bad. Not bad at all.

Big is the first thing his brain notices. Warm is the second. It stops working after that.

“Right. The sim,” he croaks. The sim that he snuck out to get more time on. The one he needs to work at so he can break more of Shirogane’s records. He could even practice KS-1275, he did just get some tips after all.

Instead, he asks, “Tomorrow?” It’s almost midnight, so technically tomorrow is in roughly thirty minutes. Keith could finish a sim run in that time and then go pet the cats afterwards. He doesn’t need that much practice. Or sleep. Breaking all of Shirogane’s records doesn’t seem quite so important anymore anyway. Shirogane’s a nice enough guy; he can keep a few of them. Well. Maybe one.

“Tomorrow,” Shirogane confirms. “We can meet up for dinner and visit the cats after.”

Keith tries to quash his eagerness, but still nods a little too quickly. “That sounds good.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow then. Good night, Keith,” says Shirogane, stepping back and giving Keith the space to think again.

“Good night, Shirogane,” Keith replies a beat too slow; Shirogane’s halfway to the door. But at Keith’s voice, he pauses and turns around.

“Shiro,” he says. “My friends call me Shiro.”

Friends. That was more than Keith had hoped for. He would take being friends with Shiro, gladly.

“Good night, Shiro,” Keith says, a smile splitting his face.

“Good night, Keith,” says Shiro with an answering grin.

 

\---

 

Being friends with Shiro is the best kind of strange. He and Keith—they click. And even though nothing else has changed, everything seems easier, like flicking on a lightswitch Keith had never realized was off.

The shift from strangers to something more isn’t instantaneous, but it isn’t slow either. It’s ignition. Compression. Spark. Movement. This potential has been here since the moment that they met, but the timing was all wrong until now. Wanting too much too soon had left Keith feeling cold and choppy, all excitement shorted by his own expectations. But little by little, moment by moment, he and Shiro are turning over something far stronger than Keith’s sense of should be.

He’s finding that patience really can be a virtue.

Playing with the cats after dinner becomes regular lunch dates becomes working out together at the gym. Keith learns more about Shiro (he can’t cook to save his life), more about himself (his cat-hissing is startlingly realistic), and more about how life sweetens when you share it with someone who’s close enough to touch. Tensing at every hand on his shoulder becomes leaning in becomes reaching out himself.

Time itself begins to flow together and before he knows it, the school year’s passed and Keith’s spending his summer evenings on the floor of Shiro’s dorm room, raiding Shiro’s closet for his not-so-secret stash of ramen, and boiling it in an electric hot pot/kettle that a guy on Keith’s hall didn’t want to lug home after graduation.

Keith’s done with today’s summer classes, but Shiro’s days have started getting longer and longer. Fall is closing in fast. Though the sun won’t set until eight, by midnight the desert chill will seep in, a ghostly premonition of autumn in its wind. There’s a lot of training to cram in before the Kerberos mission launches.

Instead of mulling over the distance between Earth and Pluto until Shiro shows up to distract him, Keith goes exploring.

For a while, all he can hear are his own quiets breaths huffing in counterpoint to his even footfalls and steady heartbeat. But as he comes to a crossroad, faint strains of music float out of a little used room at the back of the L-2 hallway and beckon him down an unfamiliar path. Though Keith’s been taking advantage of the near-empty buildings to stroll through the Garrison’s deserted corridors, this is still unexplored territory. He sidles closer to the open doorway; it’s cracked just so, like someone didn’t check to make sure the latch clicked. With a final sweep of the hallway—still empty—Keith nudges the door wider with his boot and ducks inside. There’s nothing around that says he can’t be here.

Inside the room, tucked into a small corner on its far side, stands an upright, maplewood piano. Its dark, stained corners are chipped and one of the legs looks like it's been used as a scratching post, but the sound it produces is clean and bright and resonates in Keith's bones. Though that last one could be due to the pianist’s influence. Keith can only see the top of a tousled head of hair and the long lines of broad shoulders, but he knows that hair, knows those shoulders.

He’s never thought of Shiro as a delicate man, but as Keith tiptoes further into the room, he spots Shiro’s fingers fluttering like birds’ wings over the piano keys. His music is bright and smooth, arcing like stones skimming over a still lake. And even where the notes linger, they’re the soft morning sun of an early summer day, unhurried and stretching out with limitless potential. It sounds like Shiro makes Keith feel—full of infinite, radiant possibilities. Like ten thousand wonderful maybes that are all answered yes.

Keith wants to wrap himself in this music and stay here forever, but all things end in their own time.

As the last lilting notes ring out—one final question waiting for an answer, unresolved, but not incomplete—Keith starts clapping before he's realized what his hands are doing.

Shiro peeks over the piano’s back, a violent blush heating his face and Keith’s sure his own cheeks are just as red. He shouldn't have spoiled the moment. But he did, so now he's got to man up and deal with the consequences.

“This is why you’ve been late for dinner?” he asks, moving to hover over Shiro’s shoulder. “I can see why you’d pick this over boxed mac and cheese.”

Curiosity getting the better of him, he sneaks a look at the piano, only to find that there’s no sheet music. Shiro scoots to one side of the lacquered bench and Keith slots easily into the warm, empty space Shiro made for him. "I didn't know you could play the piano."

 

Scratching at the back of his neck, Shiro admits, "I haven't played in years. My mom made me take lessons when I was a kid, but I haven't really touched a piano since I enlisted.” He waves a hand, trying to grasp the right words. “I was just thinking, nothing should go wrong, but if it does… Who know when I’ll get a chance to play again.”

 

“Hey.” Keith bumps Shiro’s shoulder with his own. “Nothing’s going to happen. You’ll be back in just over a year, playing like you never left.”

But though Keith laces his words with steadfast confidence, the silence between them grows heavy, weighed down by worries and what ifs.

He scrambles for something, anything, to say.

"Do you... play here often?"

And immediately wants to kick himself. Shiro just said—

 

But Shiro laughs and Keith figures a little humiliation is a small price to pay to make him smile again.

"Only sometimes. It's a bit embarrassing to play when other people are around and this wing is pretty busy during the year."

"Oh. Sorry."

 

Shiro's eyes widen. "No! I didn't mean—You're fine. I just didn't do well with recitals when I was a kid and that mostly still holds true. Nerves. One year for Christmas, I played ‘Silent Night’ so fast that no one recognized it. They all thought the program had had a misprint."

Keith snorts; Shiro grins.

"You sounded good right now. Really good." Keith isn't exaggerating, though he shouldn’t be surprised; Shiro is diligent in all things. And while Keith knows next to nothing about music, even he can tell that Shiro's strong fingers have a musical grace honed through long years of practice.

"... Thanks." For some reason, Shiro won’t look at him. Keith’s about to start worrying when Shiro asks, "Have you ever played an instrument?"

"I never really stayed in one place long enough to pick one up."

"Would you like to learn?"

Keith swallows. His throat is dry enough that he can hear it click. He shouldn’t. But he wants to. He wants to so badly. He wants to stay here and sit next to Shiro for as long as he can, hoarding every moment he can get his greedy hands on before time runs out and Shiro is swept off to the far reaches of space.

"I can't teach you anything complicated, but there are a few simple songs I bet you could pick up in no time. You're a fast learner."

"Yeah. That'd be great," Keith murmurs and prays that his cracking voice doesn't give him away.

Shiro smiles and taps a white key with his right pinky. "This,” he says, “is C." He plays another white key with his middle finger and names another note. "A.” Another key, even further down than the previous two, sounds at the touch of Shiro’s thumb. “F.” One final white key, sitting between the A and F rings beneath the weight of Shiro’s index finger. “And G.”

He lifts his hand and places it over identical keys higher on the board. “There are only seven different notes, but they can be higher,” he plays again and the notes chime thin and clear like bells, “or lower.” Once more, and deep, bass tones roll through Keith like thunder, like Shiro’s own soft, rumbling timbre. “They’re all the same notes, but in different octaves.”

Keith would swear his eyes only wandered for a moment—flitting from the curled arches of Shiro’s fingers and lingering on the cambers of his wrists, one bound and set awkwardly straight by a leather cuff, the other curving gently from forearm to elbow—but it must have been longer than he’d thought. The piano’s thrumming strings have quieted and Shiro is staring at him, mouth pinched and small and rueful. A facsimile of a smile.

“Sorry, you probably weren’t expecting a vocabulary lesson. This must be pretty dull.”

“No! I—” lost track of time gawking at you instead of paying attention like I should have been. But Keith can’t say that and he can’t think of anything else to say that doesn’t sound just as stupid, so he stays mulishly silent and digs his nails into the supple black leather encasing his palms.

“Don’t worry about it. We’ll try something more hands on. Why don’t you follow my lead?”

Shiro taps out an easy tune following the note pattern he’d just shown off, using two hands and two octaves, bouncing between high notes and low notes, cycling the whole pattern over again when he hits the final G. After the the third repetition, Keith joins in, playing the same spritely cycle a few octaves further down. His jittering heartbeat pounds through his hands and knocks his fingers into the keys. Though he’s only using two fingers the pick out the notes, they stumble like the gangly legs of an ungainly fawn and stutter the tempo, at first too fast, and then too slow. Always off Shiro’s pace, discordant and out of sync.

“It’s okay to miss a few notes,” says Shiro, playing on, steady as a metronome. “You don’t need to catch up. You don’t need to play everything. Match my rhythm: one and two and three and four and.” One note sounds per number, one note per and. “We’re at a walking speed, so if you miss a step, be patient and wait for the next beat in time. Patience—”

“Yields focus. I know.”

Shiro smiles at him, warm and soft and fond. “Yeah, you do.”

Keith melts—he can’t help it—and the tension eases from his hands. He’s supposed to be having fun. He is going to have fun. So sitting alone with Shiro in a sun-dappled room on an old maple piano bench, Keith does something he hasn’t in years. He plays.

It’s a bit simple, a bit stilted, unpracticed fingers moving at an uneven gait, but it’s nice, pleasant even. Like the clink of pennies dropped into a wishing well. And repetition breeds familiarity and comfort, slowly smoothing the rocky edges of his short staccato notes until he and Shiro are in perfect harmony.

“Good,” Shiro calls out over the hum of music in the air. “Now, keep walking with me.”

“Yes, sir.”

Keith expects Shiro to up the pace, maybe even throw in new note combinations for him to learn and match. Instead, he launches into the melody. It’s half-familiar, something that Keith has heard before, but can’t quite name. He could probably pick up the tune, but he doesn’t need to. It’s better like this. They fit together, fill in each other’s empty spaces. They’re partners in a dance, Shiro deftly leading and Keith only too happy to follow that guiding light. They spin and turn through each refrain, fingers frolicking over a field of keys, hands crossing, bodies coming together and whirling away, again and again and again.

As the song swings, Shiro’s body sways with it and Keith has to bite his lip to stifle a snigger. Shiro doesn’t seem to even realize what he’s doing, eyes half-lidded and jaw lax as he moves with the music’s ebb and flow. Keith savors the moment, basking in the glow that fills his chest at the sight of Shiro unguarded and clearly enjoying himself, before sinking back into the music so that he doesn’t fall behind. But then his shoulder bumps Shiro’s and he realizes oh, he’s been unconsciously dancing, too.

Shiro blinks wide eyes at him. Keith blinks back in horror and a high, strangled noise escapes his throat. It could charitably be called a whine. Shiro snorts. Then coughs. Then breaks down and laughs, mouth hanging open, head thrown back, body wracked with giddy tremors, and eyes crinkled shut.

And Keith wants to hate him for how beautiful he is. Crowned in sunlight and gilded in glee that shines like stars, Shiro is resplendence incarnate, crooked grin and all. Keith has tried to keep from getting too attached to Shiro, from reaching out and clinging to someone who will inevitably leave him behind, but it hasn’t worked out well so far, and even that last bit of distance is shrinking. Because Keith gives in and starts laughing too, resting his forehead on Shiro’s shoulder to hide his burning face and for now, Shiro is warm and solid and here. And this is a memory Keith can hold close and cherish when he’s finally gone.

But feelings like these are dangerous and the wheeze of Shiro’s lungs start to sound like the hiss of a lit fuse to Keith’s ears. He needs to run before it’s too late. Stammering out an excuse, offering to make Shiro’s dinner for him because even the cats know not to let Shiro near so much as a microwave, he flees before Shiro can respond.

He doesn’t make it far, escaping just beyond the music room and slamming the door behind him before he crumples to the ground and presses his face to the cool wall, hoping it’ll kill the fevered flush creeping over his cheeks. He knows that what he feels for Shiro is intense and growing by the day, but he can’t name it. He can’t. That little bit of space between them is all that’s keeping him from exploding. He’s been denying this since their friendship started, wary of what it could turn into, letting his emotions smolder in that smokey area between friends and… not. Denial is so much safer.

But he was the one who started this countdown. He was the one who sought Shiro out. He was the one who said yes to each invitation Shiro extended. He was the one who couldn’t leave well enough alone. Tick. Tick. Tick.

Boom.

The Garrison’s walls are thinner than they look and the soundproofing in unrestricted areas is minimal at best, so Keith can hear when Shiro starts playing again, the same duet they played together, modified for a solo performance. And apparently, the music has lyrics.

Soft and quavering, like wind-shifted sand, Shiro croons, “Heart and soul, I fell in love with you heart and soul. The way a fool would do madly, because you held me tight…”

Yeah. Keith’s knows what this feeling is called. And with every thump in his chest, he comes a little more undone. Like a sandstorm is scraping his heart raw and leaving it to burn in the sun. It’s itchy and tight and the pain is sharp and stabbing when he’s not careful. The simple exposure is terrifying.

And yet… And yet. For all that the vulnerability makes him shy away, Keith is drawn back to the flames time and time again. Because whenever Shiro says his name, he forgets to be scared. Because whenever his eyes catch Shiro’s, anticipation electrifies his skin. Because every time they touch, it feels like flying.

Because even if Keith were still nameless, Shiro has inked himself indelibly into Keith’s soul.

 

\---

 

The last decade has treated Keith’s childhood home no kinder than it’s treated Keith himself. The old ranch house’s outer fencing is half-rotted, while off-white miniature wool stars have taken root in the clogged gutters, and the paint around the door is peeling away in long, brittle strips. Bolted plywood panels have kept the windows from cracking, but the glass is still caked in a fine layer of red dust. Keith unlocks the front door and tries to shove it open, but the wood has swelled and jammed into the frame so he has to knock it free with a few well-placed kicks. Inside is no better than out. It smothers Keith with stale, grave-cold air, and the shadows of drop cloth ghosts linger in every corner. The lights have been off since the day he left and they don’t turn on now. Keith drops his duffel into an empty corner. It lands with a heavy thunk and, by a stroke of luck, doesn’t burst at its straining seams. With only the rising sun to warm him, he rolls up his sleeves, sticks his head out the door for one last breath of cool, clean air, and gets to work.

One and two and three and four and. Keith un-boards the windows, uncovers the furniture, and unzips his overfull duffel. He dusts off the closet and hangs the clothing inside, one and two and three and four and. Half of it is the stuff he brought to the Garrison. Half of it is two sizes too big. He thumbs at a ketchup stain on the sleeve of his old cadet uniform, one that never came out in the wash.

Keith had been eating a burger in the commissary when he first heard the rumor, choked, and coughed up a wad of ketchup that clung to his cuff like new blood.

Kerberos mission lost. Pilot error. No survivors.

It wasn’t the first piece of gossip to surface about the Kerberos mission, but it was the nastiest. Keith preferred the one where all the food on the shuttle got turned into freeze-dried peas after a run-in with a wormhole and some cosmic radiation. That one didn’t make him want to puke. He told himself that rumors were just rumors, even when they chilled him to his bones.

But when he checked the daily news on a library computer, just in case, it chilled his blood.

Kerberos mission lost. Pilot error. No survivors.

He sat boneless before the flashing video clip where some bubbly news anchor mouthed cookie cutter condolences for the dead she didn’t even know. He was sure that if he’d left the sound on, her voice would have matched the high whine whiting out every thought in his head. He’d muted the video out of respect for the library’s silence, but now he regretted it. It wasn’t library silent at all but funeral wake silent, when everyone is seated, still and quiet as the casket, waiting for the eulogy to shatter that last defense of disbelief.

Keith’s uniform coat was sagging off his thin shoulders. A phantom tie roped itself his throat, cinching tighter, and tighter, and tighter. All he could see was red. Red books stacked like bricks on their shelves. Carmine lips painted on the news anchor’s cold, doll-like face. Red like the smell of freshly turned earth.

The bloody smear of ketchup on his own sleeve.

There wouldn’t be any bloodstains in space.

Keith ripped at his right glove, trying to get it off, needing to see, needing to know.

When the velcro finally gave way, he bit back a sob. Takashi Shirogane was as bold and dark as ever, not feathered, not faded, not scarred out. Not gone. Shiro was not gone. Could not be gone. He couldn’t be.

But the Garrison kept insisting he was.

The official announcement was issued in the first class after lunch, even though everyone already knew by then.

Kerberos mission lost. Pilot error. No survivors.

As Keith sat at his desk, he kept a steady, if ever-tightening grip on his re-gloved wrist—he’d likely end up with bruises by the end of the day. There was one survivor. They were wrong. They had to be. There was at least one survivor. But they thought they were right, which meant no one was looking for the Kerberos mission’s lost crew. And if no one looked for them, Shiro really would be gone forever.

Yet even in the wake of base-wide grief, the Garrison refused to cancel classes. Keith left anyway, hotfooting his way out the door without bothering to excuse himself, sprinting away from the classrooms until his lungs burned and his uniform clung like a wet towel. He didn’t stop until he made it to the officers’ hall.

Iverson wasn’t in his office, so Keith sank down against the door and buried his head between his knees. Anyone going in would have to trip over him to get there. He could take a moment to breathe. Maybe then his chest would stop feeling like a car wreck crushed against a tree. But even as he tried to center himself, tried to focus, his skin prickled like a colony of ants was crawling under his sweat soaked clothes and an angry hive of wasps buzzed inside his head.

Kerberos mission lost. Pilot error. No survivors.

“What are you doing sitting outside of my door?” demanded Iverson, startling Keith out of his scattered thoughts. He hadn’t heard the commander approach.

Keith scrambled to stand up and snap to attention. “Commander Iverson, sir! I need to speak with you.”

Iverson scoffed. “Then make an appointment like everyone else.”

“It’s important, sir,” Keith insisted. “It’s about the Kerberos mission.”

“That incident has already been reported in as much detail as possible. Any further details are classified information,” said Iverson, shooing Keith aside.

Keith refused to be cowed. “But sir, I have more details.”

Iverson stared at Keith a moment longer, then sighed. “Alright, come in,” he said, waving Keith inside.

He made his way behind his desk while Keith stood at attention in front of it. Iverson moved so slowly, every footfall tolling like a funeral bell, that Keith was sure he would die before Iverson finally sat down. But Iverson was a stickler for formalities and would make him wait until the proper motions were observed; Keith curled his toes in his boots to keep from fidgeting or speaking without being given leave.

“Your report, cadet,” Iverson barked once he’d settled.

“The Kerberos mission was reported lost due to a pilot error with no survivors, but that’s not true, sir. There’s at least one survivor.” Keith peeled the glove off of his right hand to reveal pale, sunless skin and dark lettering underscored by the faintest of tan lines. “Shiro. He’s…” he started, holding his wrist out for inspection.

Iverson didn’t bother glancing down.“I know what name is on your wrist. Galaxy Garrison keeps a log of every enlisted person’s soulmate in order to screen for potential conflicts of interest. Which is why I also know what name was on Shiro’s wrist. It wasn’t you.” Iverson looked Keith dead in the eye. “Takashi Shirogane, recent graduate of Galaxy Garrison and pilot of the Kerberos mission, was not your soulmate.” Despite the bluntness of Iverson’s statement, it was the past tense that stung. Shiro wasn’t past tense. Keith had had time to come to terms with the fact that he and Shiro didn’t match. Shiro’s supposed death was still a fresh, gaping wound.

Keith took in an unsteady breath that rattled around his empty chest and shuddered on its way out. “I might not be his soulmate, but he is mine,” he said, slamming his hands on Iverson’s desk and trying to will the man into believing him. “Shiro’s still out there. He’s still alive.”

Iverson was both unfazed and unmoved. “Soulmates always match. You are not a match, therefore you aren’t soulmates. Your arm is not proof that Shiro is alive. The Garrison cannot justify sending a rescue mission to retrieve a dead man.” He paused and then, for just a moment, his gruff exterior softened. For once, Commander Iverson looked… human. “Even if he were still alive, it would take months for another ship to reach Kerberos. By the time help arrived, he’d be dead anyway. I’m sorry. There’s nothing to be done.”

Keith knew Iverson was trying to be kind, weird as it seemed, but it wasn’t enough. Kindness wouldn’t bring Shiro back. “You won’t even try to get back the bodies?” Keith demanded.“The research?” The Garrison should want the research if nothing else. “You won’t investigate what went wrong so it never happens again?” Keith tried very hard to keep his voice from trembling.

“It was a pilot error.”

“Shiro wouldn’t have made a pilot error!” Keith had watched him run through the simulations all summer. Shiro may have had issues on some of his early runs, but he’d never faltered, never failed to bring his crew in safely. He didn’t make lethal pilot errors.

“For all of his academic brilliance, Shiro was a young and inexperienced pilot. He couldn't deal with the pressure and isolation of a deep space mission and he made a mental mistake that cost both his own life and the lives of his crew. It’s a terrible tragedy, but we can only move on and try to learn from his mistakes.”

Keith wanted to scream, to fling every kitschy knick-knack from Iverson’s desk so that they shattered against the wall, to do something, anything to keep Iverson from writing him off and leaving Shiro for dead. But losing his temper wouldn’t win him any points. He settled for gritting his teeth and looming. “If Shiro was such an inexperienced pilot, why did you send him on the mission? Why didn’t you pick someone else?”

Iverson didn’t even have the grace to stand.

“I am aware that you and Shiro were close during his time at the Garrison, so I have let you come here and waste my time with your unfounded theories. I have been patient and lenient out of respect for your grief, but we are all grieving for the lives lost in this terrible accident. I don’t owe you an answer, cadet, but I’ll give you one anyway.” Iverson finally stood and met Keith’s glare with his own. “We picked Shiro because we thought he was the best. We were wrong.”

Keith couldn’t listen to anymore, wouldn’t even be able to over the rush of blood in his ears. Iverson had no reason to lie, but his story felt off, the same way Shiro felt alive. Though his explanation was plausible and most people would likely believe it, Keith wasn’t most people. He could taste the deceit in Iverson’s condolences like expired milk souring a cup of cocoa; even if he couldn’t say how or why, he knew. Keith turned on his heel and dashed out of the office to keep from doing something irreparably stupid, like punching Iverson in the face.

Rage licked its way up the tense ridges of his spine. He needed to get out, to move, to do. He couldn’t go to the roof—too early in the day, too many people around, too many memories—so he shot down the hall towards the gym. Most students were still in class, but there were two or three cadets working with the free weights. It didn’t matter. The heavy bag was open.

The first punch snapped the last thread of Keith’s fraying control. This wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. The Garrison touted exploration, adventure, and working together. But as soon as one of their own was in trouble, they left him to die. The blows came harder, faster, messier, and Keith’s form was as ragged as his breathing. He relished in the sting of his knuckles. The satisfaction of letting loose and making something hurt in a way that made sense. Not like his heart did. Yet even through his tunnel vision, he wasn’t unaware. He could still hear the other cadets’ whispers beneath the clank of the heavy bag’s chain and the livid tea kettle whistle fogging up his head.

Kerberos mission lost. Pilot error. No survivors.

No survivors.

No survivors.

Keith swung at the bag.

Connected.

Crack.

Keith shakes off the memories as he shakes out his hand and shuts the closet door. It’s been two weeks now and his hand still aches when the temperatures drop at night. The heat of the day is starting to soak into the wood of the house, so it won’t be a problem for a few hours yet, but the sun’s higher than he’d thought. He’s losing time he doesn’t have. He needs to keep a better count.

One and two and three and four and. He fixes up the old solar generator, lets water fill the the dust-dry pipes, and flits in and out of the house, carrying small stacks of unwieldy cardboard boxes from his hoverbike to the living room’s far corner, one and two and three and four and. Life works in strange ways sometimes. Most of the boxes are from Mathilda’s storage shed, but if Shiro hadn’t been temporarily misplaced, who knows if Keith and Mathilda would have actually met.

She had been manning the infirmary on the night that news of the Kerberos disaster broke. When Keith’s hand still stung several hours and a handful of painkillers after his ill-advised gym session, he figured he might have done a little more than bruise his knuckles. Most of his training injuries felt fine within a few hours, and even his worst accidents healed all right if he rested for a day or two, so he’d never been to the infirmary before. But none of those injuries had sent an aching drumbeat throbbing through his hand; where every uncareful, unconscious movement bit at his nerves and stoked red sparks of pain.

Keith stepped into an empty infirmary office, but the lights were on so he called out a tentative, “Hello?”

A shout echoed from the back of the room, “I’ll be with you in a moment.”

Having nothing better to do, Keith wandered over to the brown vinyl patient bench and sat down, crinkling the the thin paper that covered it. There wasn’t much in the austere, white room: a scale, some unmarked drawers, cotton swabs set along the counter, and a few cardboard boxes cluttering the far corner. A retro clock hung above door, running three hours slow, but merrily keeping time anyway—tick, tick, tick—just out of sync with Keith’s pulse.

His fingers twitched without his say so, trying to match the clock’s lagging rhythm and he had to clench his teeth to keep himself quiet when the pain spiked in response. Clamping down on his wrist didn’t do much to dull the burn in his hand. It hurt. It wasn’t supposed to hurt like that. Misaligned bones ground together, grating against his nerves, screeching like rent metal, the flare of pain like bursting sun spots. Yet even as the sting eased, Keith cautiously flexed his hand again, taking stock of its tender places. When he’d heard the crack, he had expected it to hurt—had wanted it to hurt—but not this much. It didn’t make any sense for it to hurt this much.

Nothing made sense anymore.

And he couldn’t do anything about the hurt.

Just… wait.

Finally, he heard the doctor ask, “How can I help you?” in smooth, professional tones, her voice punctuated by the click, click, click of her low heels.

Keith held up the massive bruise that was once his hand. Along the outside edge, the deep purple bled into a sour, nauseous green.“My hand hurts. I think I broke it.”

She stared at him for a moment, long and hard, then sighed. “Sit down and I’ll take a look.” Lifting his arm with deft fingers, she asked, “What happened?”

“I was using one of the heavy bags, but I felt something snap and my hand started hurting,” Keith replied. Not one of his finer moments, but there was no point in dressing it up.

“When was this?”

“About an hour after lunch.”

“Why didn’t you come here immediately?” she asked, words curt and eyes harsh as she took a closer look at his hand.

Keith hunched down, feeling oddly guilty. “I didn’t think it was that bad. But I guess something must be really wrong if it still hurts this much.”

The doctor kept silent a beat too long, lips drawn thin and bloodless, and Keith was sure she was biting back some choice words in favor of professionalism. “I’ll need to run an x-ray to be certain, but it’s likely you have a metacarpal fracture. You have an impressive tolerance for pain and inconvenience Mr…”

“Kogane. Keith Kogane.”

Her hands paused while setting up the x-ray scanner, and she took another look at him, cataloging his features—the shape of his eyes, the slant of his nose, the soft slope of his jawline still cushioned by the last bits of baby fat that adolescence hadn’t managed strip from him just yet.

“Keith Kogane? As in Akira Kogane’s son?”

Keith cocked his head. “Yeah. Did you know my dad?” He didn’t remember much about his childhood, but the only adult who was ever around the ranch was his dad. Then again, his dad had worked at the Garrison...

“I did.” The doctor smiled wistfully and tucked a stray strand of honey blonde hair into the neat silver pins holding the rest back. “My name is Mathilda Wagner; I was honored to call your father both a colleague and a friend.” His dad had had friends? “I would shake your hand, but...” Mathilda’s smile turned wry and she gently lifted Keith’s injured hand to set it on the scanner.

“I used to treat your father often. He was rather accident-prone for a researcher. My usual patients are overeager cadets like yourself and some of the more bullheaded officers. But I saw Akira every other week or so, always sporting some strange new scratch or burn. I used to wonder if he enjoyed wandering around the desert picking fights with cougars.”

The pale blue light of the scanner set her face in stark contrasts, ghostly highlights across her cheeks and brow, heavy shadows in the stone of her jaw and the hollows of her eyes. “He was a good man,” she murmured. “The world is a lesser place without him.”

“Thanks.”

The harsh shadows receded as the machine finished scanning, and the doctor looked less alien in the fainter glow of Keith’s new chart. More like someone he wouldn’t have minded knowing when he was younger.

“Well, Keith,” said Mathilda, scrolling through the chart’s data, “it seems you’ve fractured your fourth metacarpal. It should heal well, but you’re going to need to wear a splint for at least three weeks.”

She didn’t seem to require any input from him, already at the drawers gathering supplies. Keith was content to let the silence rest, interrupted only by the occasional quiet question to check his pain levels as she worked, numbing, wrapping, and splinting his hand.

The peace lasted only until she’d wound the final length of bandage around his arm. “… I’m sorry for your loss,” she said as she secured the loose end.

“My dad died years ago. I’ve gotten over it.”

“Not him. Or, not only him I suppose.” Mathilda nodded towards Keith’s now wrapped wrist. “He was the Kerberos mission’s pilot, wasn’t he?”

“Yeah, he is,” Keith snapped, dragging out the s in is and letting it hum in his throat. Making it present. He glared at Mathilda from beneath his bangs. “He’s still alive. If you saw the name, you know it hasn’t scarred out.”

“No, it hasn’t, has it?” she said, but Keith could hear the underlying “yet” and bristled. Mathilda blithely ignored him, hunched over in his petulant slump, and curled his splinted hand like a cobra’s head ready to strike.“Does that mean you won’t go to the memorial?”

Keith bolted upright, jostling his arm. “What memorial?”

“Keep still! The splint still needs to set!” Mathilda scolded, forcing Keith to settle back down with a firm hand to his shoulder. She bent his hand back into shape and taped it down to keep him from messing it up again. “They’re going to honor the crew’s memory with a piano burn in two weeks time. It’s Garrison tradition. Rumor has it that because the pilot was the only officer who actually played the base’s piano, they’ll be burning it in his honor.”

“I-I didn’t know.” Keith had been present for the last piano burn. It had been a celebration for the Garrison’s 50th graduating class. Shiro’s class. The thought of a second burn so soon—Shiro’s piano crackling in a blaze, strings snapping and keys flaking off into ash until the whole structure collapsed onto its own charred corpse—left Keith’s stomach churning.

“You still have time to decide,” came the careful reply as Mathilda peeled the tape from his arm and finished fussing with the already neat wrap. “You’ll want to keep your hand elevated and iced for at least twenty-four hours to keep the swelling down. You also need to keep the splint clean and dry. Don’t pick at the edges; don’t try to scratch at your hand with a coat hanger and if any itching persists, come talk to me. I also want you to come in for another x-ray next week so I can make sure your hand is healing properly.”

“Got it. I’ll take care. Thanks,” said Keith as he stood and headed towards the door.

“And Keith,” Mathilda called out, pulling out a business card and scribbling something on the back before pressing it into Keith’s good hand. “This is my home address. Your father left a few things in my care; you’re welcome to them any time you’d like.”

Keith’s fingers curled around blunt corners. “I’ll think about it. Thanks. Again.”

He hadn’t planned on taking Mathilda up on her offer, but a week before the Kerberos crew’s memorial, he found himself haunting the stoop of her sprawling ranch house despite himself.

“Uh. Hi,” he said when Mathilda the answered the door. He tried smiling at her—it seemed like the thing to do—but it sat stiff and awkward on his face, like a jello mold gone horribly, horribly wrong. “I was wondering if I could take a look at some of my dad’s stuff.”

Mathilda’s smile was much warmer and more natural, smooth and sweet like honey. “Of course,” she said, grabbing a gray hoodie off of a coat rack and a set of keys from a blue glass bowl. “Follow me.” Closing the front door behind her, she waved Keith to follow her into the night.

She lead him along a gravel-strewn path that crunched beneath their shoes and into a set of converted stables with a sloping roof and multiple wide doors that swung open easily on well-oiled hinges. Piled high from floor to ceiling were rows upon rows of neatly stacked boxes intermingled with some odd shapes wrapped up in dust covers. Keith couldn’t even see to the other end of the building, swallowed as it was by shadows.

“Whoa.” he said, fingers trailing over the nearest object. His callouses caught on the drop cloth and it slipped to the floor, puddling around pale-stained, beechwood legs. Keith’s heart squeezed in his chest. It wasn’t the same, but... Fumbling for purchase with only one working hand, he picked up the cloth and slowly, gently smoothed it back over ivory-white and coal-black keys. Stopped thinking about sunlit rooms and the sound of forever. Turned his back on the piano and what might have been.

He went to examine some other boxes labeled in scrawling sharpie and remarked, “When you said a few things, I wasn’t expecting this.” The entire stack was full of outdated tech—radars, radios and the like—that most people would have dumped after all this time.

Mathilda shrugged. “My husband and I have been acting as custodians for most of Akira’s property. We had the extra space and Clive was already the will’s executor, so I suppose Akira thought it would be easiest this way.” When Keith shifted his gaze from the boxes to Mathilda, she had wrapped her arms around herself and was staring into the the middle distance over his shoulder, lost in cobwebs of memories he had never even considered. Then, haltingly, as if the words needed to be surgically removed from her mouth, she confessed, “We would have been overjoyed to take you in as well, but Akira specifically forbade it. It was… difficult to honor his wishes, especially when we saw you at the funeral.” Keith ignored a choked noise that sounded suspiciously like sniffling. He wasn’t sure which of them it came from anyway.

He also ignored the pleading eyes Mathilda turned on him when she said, “The least I can do now is offer you the things with which he did entrust us.”

Keith tipped his head towards a tarp that didn’t quite cover the beautiful red beast beneath it. “Even the hoverbike?”

Thankfully, Mathilda took the bait and chuckled, though her laugh was weak and watery. “I should have known that that would catch your attention.”

“01 Sicos are a good model. Classic, though not as fast as the new 7-Vs.” Stepping away from the hoverbike, Keith darted between clear plastic bins of books whose subjects ranged from astrophysics, to local folklore, to children’s fairy tales, dodged around bulky pieces of furniture, and then nearly tripped over a tipped bucket of fireworks that were so old that the colored paper had leached into an ashen gray and crumbled at the edges. “I don’t remember most of this stuff.”

“Yes, well, we also use this space for general storage. No one has touched anything in here for years though, so if you see something that catches your eye, feel free to help yourself.”

There was… a lot of stuff. Way too much for Keith to ever want, let alone need. And Mathilda wasn’t looking at him again, but her body was angled toward his and her fingers kept twitching in small, aborted attempts at reaching out.

Keith went back to scavenging. With his torso half-buried in a box and voice barely audible over the resulting rustle of brittle paperwork, he said, “I’ll keep that in mind.”

It was another offer he’d never really planned on taking, but there had been too many days between then and the Kerberos crew’s memorial. Too much time to think and stew. Too many whispers in the Garrison’s sterile, polished hallways. Too many lies that only he seemed to notice. But, it was just enough to burn away the last vestiges of his patience, to temper his fury and frustration and hone them into focus sharp enough to shred the monolith to scrap metal. All he needed was time, and he had just enough that to plan and prepare.

For all that the Garrison was supposedly a highly secure government facility, its “state of the art” systems could be cracked by anyone with a student ID and a little gumption. By lights out, Keith had already ditched his splint—his hand had healed well enough for now—and strapped Shiro’s piano onto his dad’s old hoverbike. The red Sico, not designed to hold such heavy cargo, tilted under the extra weight and shuddered when Keith flicked the start switch, but it kicked aloft just the same. 01s were classics for a reason. Nothing was more reliable, even when pushed beyond their limits.

Getting the bike on to Garrison property had been surprisingly simple. Getting it off however, was a bit more challenging. The base was enclosed by solid concrete walls roughly twenty feet high; large steel gates and smaller boom barriers manned by round-the-clock staff formed the only exit point; and before Keith even made it to the outer gates, he would have to cross more than a hundred and fifty yards of open field on a bike slowed down by his stolen goods.

Though lights out started at 2200 for cadets, the heavy gates stayed open late for officers who wanted to spend their evenings in town. Keith idled, waiting for the liminal moment between curfew and closing when the guards became complacent and yawns slurred already lazy greetings at the nightly shift change. When the new guards arrived, he had at most a minute of distracted chatter to make it past the gates. He revved his engine and gunned it.

Sometimes the only way out was through.

He blew straight through the boom barriers, leaving behind only dust and the softest echoes of his laughter. The guards stunned faces were priceless.

Unfortunately, while the Garrison was hilariously unprepared for such a flagrant assault from the inside, it was still an institution of highly trained professionals and they managed to scramble some smaller vehicles to tail him. Massive dust clouds were easy to track on calm desert nights. Keith firmed his jaw and twisted the throttle.

Even as his speed ticked up, the Garrison’s crafts were lighter and faster, steadily eating at the ground between them. Keith cut through narrow gaps in the cliffsides to lose them, but his pursuers were almost as familiar with the terrain as he was. For all his efforts, he barely slowed them down, gaining only inches, not feet. No space to breathe.

Then he saw the drop.

He must have taken a wrong turn somewhere, mind muddled by adrenaline and the crawling fear of what would happen if he failed curling in his gut. It was too steep. Too wide. He couldn’t jump it. This wasn’t where he was supposed to be—Shiro was supposed to—none of this was supposed to happen. Two Garrison crafts were flanking him now and if he didn’t break soon, he was going to crash and burn.

Funny.

He’d started all of this to avoid the flames.

He could stop now and get caught. Iverson would be livid, but he’d given Keith more leeway recently than Keith had honestly expected. He might not get booted for this stunt. But Shiro’s piano would burn. Shiro would…

Keith could fight it—would fight it, but he was just one man and he was running out of options.

The cliff loomed closer.

Air currents kissed his face.

Fight, or flight?

Fight or…

One and two and three and four and. Keith slurps down a bowl of soup with a best by date that passed a decade prior, scrubs away the day’s salt and dust in a lukewarm shower, and spits toothpaste foam the color of an underdone steak into a sink still streaked with soap scum. No matter how hard or how many times he brushes, his mouth still tastes like ash. And when he steps out into the dying night and sees the sunset sitting low on the horizon, all he can see is fire.

Keith hadn’t been sure that the Garrison would even let him on base for the Kerberos crew’s memorial after his escapades the night before, but he’d tried anyway. Nothing ventured, nothing gained and all. It turned out Iverson, though abrasive as steel wool at the best of times, had had a heart after all.

“I’ll allow you on base for the memorial and only for the memorial,” he’d said. “I want you and your stuff gone by the time the smoke clears.”

It was more generous than Keith had expected and more time than he needed. He didn’t have any reason to linger at Galaxy Garrison, and he didn’t mind that he had officially flunked out because of “discipline issues”. He didn't want to be part of an institution that would leave men, good men, to die alone in the cold void of space. That would leave their bodies to float endlessly like so much space debris. That wouldn’t even try to figure out what happened. Keith would never fly through the stars with the Garrison and that was fine—good even. Garrison wings were made of wax.

Still. He didn’t belong with the crush of milling cadets anymore, so he sidled around to the civilian fringes. Keith didn’t recognize anyone in the crowd around him. These people may have known the crew, been family members, or friends from town, and yet he couldn’t identify a single one. The cynical part of Keith wondered if they were really there for the crew or if they were just people who had a taste for tragedy. Most were in black. A few were sniffling into tissues. But there was a girl standing nearby, watery eyed but tissue-less, overheating in a heavy black dress but with her hair held back by a pastel purple headband. Keith commiserated, sweating as he was in his own red jacket and dark shirt.

In the end, it was Iverson who did the honors, face solemn as he approached an upright piano and dropped a flaming torch into its open lid. The piano didn’t catch immediately, but soon enough the pale wood blackened as orange flames licked along the boxy sides.

As it turned out, beech wood burns hot, and clean, and long.

Keith knew that Shiro still wasn’t dead—even two weeks out Shiro’s name was as dark as ever—but he stood with the mourners anyway. He could grieve for the lost as well as the dead. They were both too far away.

He stood, and stood, and stood, stiff and still and straight, until his calves and shoulders ached with tension. Until the heat—and only the heat—made his eyes sting. Until the bright orange cadet uniforms blurred with the brick red sand and the piano’s brilliant flames into an endless, all-consuming blaze, and the mourners were a mass of smoke that wouldn’t blow away in the wind.

And all he could taste was ash.

People always say that things will be better tomorrow. But today is yesterday’s tomorrow and the sun is slipping below the horizon. The darkness is closing in and soon today’s tomorrow will arrive. And things aren’t any better. Keith’s mouth is minty fresh, but still coated in ash. His body is clean, but his soapy, woodsy scent is laced with smoke. He steps back inside, finds the nearest seat—an old maple piano bench—and sits. He’s tired of standing.

One and two and three and four and. Keith taps eight different piano keys, four different notes in two different octaves. Each key gets tapped twice. He keeps time—one and two and three and four and—four beats per measure, eight notes per measure, sixteen notes before the cycle starts again.

He keeps time; there’s never enough time. He keeps playing; he can’t stop. He keeps his hands steady, steady, steady, as if he were flying; his breath won’t stop shaking.

Keith can’t keep anything, can’t keep anything at all.

The bench is cold without another body beside him and the simple notes of his song echo low and lonely in the empty concrete kitchen of his rundown ranch house.

The music rings hollow without its melody.

 

-  
-  
-

 

As the final notes fade to nothing, Keith would swear he hears a lion roar in the desert.


End file.
